Yeah I know the game is influential and started a whole genre and revolutionary but MAN is this game just not well designed. The visuals of the buttons you need to press not lining up with the actual music in a RHYTHM game is just flat out bad game design. It is a critical, CRITICAL flaw in a game that really doesn't have any other issues. The songs aren't bad, the story and cutscenes are bonkers and childish but kinda charming too, and the mechanics and gameplay are, as stated earlier, revolutionary and even today stand out in the now established rhythm game genre. But the fact that the visuals are not synced to the actual rhythm brings down the game significantly. It's not like you can just ignore the visuals either, since you need to know which buttons to press anyway, but looking at the button visuals actively messes you up. The second game fixed this one small issue and was massively more enjoyable for it. Just play that one instead.

I debated between giving this game a 7 or an 8. It reminds me a lot of Justice for All, in that it has two great cases and two terrible cases. Of course, this game doesn't have something has good as Farewell, My Turnabout, but it also doesn't have something as terrible as Turnabout Big Top. It's hard to rank a game when its quality wavers so much throughout the experience, and so drastically. But overall, the opening and conclusion are strong enough that I'd call this a great game, though definitely my least favorite so far. It is an Ace Attorney game after all, so if you like the formula of the series then you already know this will at least be a fun time with a solid story, fun and memorable characters, and great music as always.

oh also the perceive system is uhhhh fine, it's definitely a lot cooler than psych-locks but a lot more annoying gameplay-wise

As someone who started playing the Pikmin series this year, I can't fully appreciate what this game means to so many people. I wasn't there for the release of Pikmin 3 and the decade-long wait for this game to finally, finally come out. But I think I can come close. Because I did play the first three games this year, and loved them all, and I was eager to finally play Pikmin 4.

And it's... kind of mind blowing. The sheer perfection of this game is... unreal. Pikmin 3 was already a near-perfect masterpiece. And unfortunately, there are some steps backwards taken with this one. The artstyle is a little less appealing, the campaign is less replayable, the story is weaker, the soundtrack might be the weakest in the series. But it all comes down to the most important and most fundamental aspect of a game like this: the gameplay and level design. And that -- that is at its peak for this series.

The levels in this game are breathtakingly gorgeous. The game is a little more cartoon-y than its predecessors, but its environments are so much more interesting and alive than anything to come before it. There really aren't more memorable vistas than the giant park bench in Sun-Speckled Terrace, or the grill in Giant's Hearth, or, like, the entirety of Hero's Hideaway? Seriously, how COOL is it that you can go inside a house in this game? It feels so weird and unique for the series but also for video games in general. It raises so many questions, gets your brain thinking about what exactly happened to the humans, to the people. And the environments are just so beautiful. So much love was poured into each one. And of course, thanks to Oatchi, they're able to be so much more vertical and traversal-based than before. AND, because of the new free camera, they're able to be completely open environments too. It's really incredible going from the restricted areas of 3 to this. The campaign is less tight in terms of progression, and the game is a lot easier thanks in part to this, but it's still a great change to the formula.

Caves are back, too. They're probably the weakest aspect of the game, but they're still a ton of fun. I wish they had some more challenge, but the fact that they were actually designed and aren't procedurally generated like 2's caves makes them a massive step up.

The best addition to the gameplay has to be the Dandori modes. I mean, they were in 3. But integrating them into the main campaign is just genius. Dandori Battles especially are incredibly improved and streamlined from the kinda hectic Bingo Battles in 3, and while we don't have any incredible Challenge stages like Fortress of Festivity yet, most of those were DLC and what we have now are really fun and tightly designed, albeit a little on the easier end.

I'm pretty mixed on Night Expeditions, but they're still pretty fun. Idk, I like them. Don't have much else to say other than I wish they were harder. That's an issue with the whole game -- this is by far the easiest Pikmin game, even more than 3. I hope they add a hard mode, but oh well. It's not a huge problem.

The weakest aspect of the gameplay is probably the new auto-lock feature. I don't want to talk too much about this because my opinion is kind of controversial, but I personally really like it. Most of the time. When it gets in the way, it's extremely frustrating, and it absolutely should be a toggled mechanic. But when it does work, which is the vast majority of the time, it feels so fast and fluid to throw Pikmin. It's great. But it should be optional for sure.

Honestly, I couldn't have asked for more in a Pikmin game. This is everything I wanted from 4 and more. Pikmin 4 is one of the most enjoyable, fun, creative, and artistic games I've ever played, with nearly 40 hours of content on my first playthrough and, as is tradition, an endlessly replayable campaign that I'm sure I'll be back through in due time. I'll end this with the same call to action as my Pikmin 3 review:

Play this game.

I probably need to play a fair bit more to come to a fully formed opinion, but I think I have seen enough to say that this game, despite being disappointingly unpolished, has a very, very, very funny core gameplay loop. Like, very few things in a video game are as funny as hearing the muffled, barely audible screams of one of your friends along with monster noises. When in the first three hours of playing a game you laugh out loud more than you have at pretty much any other multiplayer game besides maybe Mario Party. It bears a lot of resemblance to Among Us, which also relies heavily on social interaction to supplement its simple gameplay, and I still love to play a game of Among Us with my friends, even three years later. So even though I'm sure the internet will forget about it, and even though I probably won't be playing it a whole lot going forward, I think this is a social game that will stand the test of time for me personally and be something I pick up with my pals every so often for the foreseeable future.

This is the third time I've played this game since I first played it back in August of this year. And each time my appreciation for the sheer perfection of this game grows stronger. This time I went on Ultra-Spicy, which wasn't as fun due to the 60-pikmin limit, but it didn't really affect my enjoyment too much. The core gameplay loop of defeating enemies and growing pikmin and gathering fruit and trying your hardest to get as much done in a day as possible is just so good. Gorgeous environments, super creative and fun enemies, adorable little goobers that follow your every command... honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I play this game several more times next year. Please just play this game if you haven't. It's an unforgettable experience.